


Solace

by MlleMusketeer



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Abusive Relationships, M/M, discussion of abusive relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3583260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MlleMusketeer/pseuds/MlleMusketeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Orion Pax Part 3. Optimus Prime returns to the Autobots, and June Darby offers advice, understanding, and sympathy. Rated for subject matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solace

June watches Optimus move around the base, the oh-so-slight hesitation, the way one huge hand keeps coming up to touch the new badge on his shoulder. She has no idea if Bill’s picked up on it, or any of the kids, but to her practiced eye it’s familiar, pain and uncertainty. The disbelief of a deep wound, broken trust.

Funny that it looks so similar in an alien as it does in a primate.  Ratchet’s picked up on it too and the discomfort in every line of that gigantic alien body is what tipped her off in the first place.

She’s seen this plenty of times before, in the emergency room-- “No, Doctor, it was an accident”, “No, Doctor, really, I fell”, “He’d never hit me, it’s only that he’s been having a hard time at work”, “I can take care of myself”... All excuses and though the words are entirely different, there is something of the same tone in Optimus’s voice as he reassures the others about his condition. 

She thinks about Jack’s father, about how she missed him when she shouldn’t have.

People don’t listen when you tell them directly what they ought to do, but if you talk about yourself, about these hard things, they listen because you are giving them hostages--painful things from your past that not many know. Maybe it works with giant alien robots, too. 

She waits while the others leave to other parts of the base, Miko’s voice echoing loud over the sounds of feet and movement, and leans on the railing. It brings her nowhere near the level of Optimus’s head but it’s as good as it’s going to get. 

“So,” she says after a silence, during which he pretends interest in something else. He looks up at her and the uncomfortably direct words die in her throat. She looks away from the brilliant blue of whatever the hell they call their eyes, and swallows hard. She knows better than to think that big, strong people aren’t abuse victims—she’s seen too many—but that observation’s not likely to be well received. It’s not in humans, at least.

“Jack’s father left when he was four,” she says after a long pause. It’s still hard to talk about, even though she’s got it down to a script at this point. She knows every word but they all seem trite, mean, self-centered now. “I missed him a lot, at first. It got a little better over time. But not a lot, not for Jack, not for me.”

Optimus just looks at her, and she can’t tell whether he’s politely interested or just looking at a bug on the wall behind her. The shoulder with the new brand shifts, ever so slightly, as if feeling the weight of an alien hand.

“And, you know, I wasted a lot of time wondering where I went wrong, thinking of ways to find him and bring him back. He made me feel like it was my fault, you see. He...” And she lets her voice choke a little on that one, and it’s not fake. This is the rawest wound of all—it hurt still more at the time. “I guess it would have helped if he’d been useless,” she says, losing the script. “But he was really good at his job. A surgeon. Brilliant, really. And I kept hearing about him, at work, in the news. And every time it was like the world was blaming me for screwing up and making this wonderful man leave me. It took me months to actually clean out the garage of his stuff. And when I did...”

She still remembers that moment—a day off, Jack at school, standing there with the flies coming in the open garage door with a pair of dirty socks in her hands. 

“When I did, I remembered things as they’d really been. The man I was regretting had left me years ago. He’d changed. Or maybe just gotten tired of acting. Seeing his stuff again, all the crap music he used to listen to and all the mess he used to leave around? Made me realize that I’d been the one who’d put up with way too much.”

Optimus finally, finally blinks. Some knot in her chest undoes at that, and the final words come in a rush. 

“While I was with him, he made me feel like I was always doing things wrong. The way he left—the things he said—they were the icing on the cake,” it occurs to her that he might not be familiar with that phrase, and she adds, “the nastiest. And when I realized that, I also realized that he wasn’t worth this. Because he left. And I should have left long before he did.”

She stands looking up at Optimus, hoping that he’s not going to think she’s stupid for all this, hoping he’ll understand some of this, and that it won’t get eaten by cultural gaps. Hoping that her story might bring him some comfort, some easing of the guilt. “None of it’s worth feeling guilty over,” she says. “Not the leaving. Not the sadness. Not the trust you used to have. I realized that, that it wasn’t my fault, and it never had been, and that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I realized I was allowed to be angry about what he’d done to me, and that I didn’t need to feel guilty for _letting_ him do it to me. And it’s hard to believe. But that doesn’t make it any less true. For anyone.”

There is a long pause. Has she been too blunt, offensive even, and he’s being polite?

And then the expressionless face smiles, a tiny, charming smile. It looks like one of those emoticons Jack keeps using in his texts. It’s almost silly. 

“Thank you,” says Optimus, a creature eons old, and June’s heart lifts with pleasure. She may be working out of her species, but she can still ease pain.

 


End file.
